tutor who is not a pedant, but a man of letters or a man of the world,
and if in the metropolis so much the better. In a word, my young
friend is unlike other people; and, with qualities that might do
anything in life, I fear, unless you can get him to be like other
people, that he will do nothing. Excuse the freedom with which I
write, and ascribe it to the singular interest with which your son has
inspired me. I have the honour to be, dear Sir Peter,

Yours truly, WILLIAM HORTON.


Upon the strength of this letter Sir Peter did not indeed summon
another family council; for he did not consider that his three maiden
sisters could offer any practical advice on the matter. And as to Mr.
Gordon, that gentleman having gone to law on the great timber
question, and having been signally beaten thereon, had informed Sir
Peter that he disowned him as a cousin and despised him as a man; not
exactly in those words,--more covertly, and therefore more stingingly.
But Sir Peter invited Mr. Mivers for a week's shooting, and requested
the Reverend John to meet him.

Mr. Mivers arrived. The sixteen years that had elapsed since he was
first introduced to the reader had made no perceptible change in his
appearance. It was one of his maxims that in youth a man of the world
should appear older than he is; and in middle age, and thence to his
dying day, younger. And he announced one secret for attaining that
art in these words: "Begin your wig early, thus you never become
gray."

Unlike most philosophers, Mivers made his practice conform to his